In her opening address to the annual oil and gas industry conference in Aberdeen, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will say there should be incentives for oil and gas exploration following the oil price crash a few months back, the BBC reports.

The Pope’s climate change encyclical leaked the other day, and will be formally announced on Thursday. What is Pope Francis hoping to accomplish? Vox has done an explainer-listicle.

The religious leader’s to-be intervention has already made its mark in US presidential politics, with the New York Times explaining how it may hurt the five Catholic Republican candidates who will likely criticise the Pope and his encyclical.

But it won’t stop the GOP’s environmental agenda, namely undoing Obama’s new regulations and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Associated Press reports that a Republican Senate committee has voted to slash $500m from the EPA’s budget.

Meanwhile a new scientific study has found that – surprise, surprise – environmental policy makes a big impact on how clean a state’s air is, reports Think Progress.

The Obama administration has received $4bn in clean energy investment, more than twice its target set in February, writes Reuters.

Over in the Europe, the renewable energy efforts of a a clutch of major countries – including the UK, France and the Netherlands – have been found to be wanting,reports the Guardian.

The 2009 targets mean that EU countries are supposed to source 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, and the Commission says those three countries (as well as Malta and Luxembourg) should consider changing course so that they may meet this target.